A few days ago, I got home from work, and I was depressed. My thoughts running hither and tither. I was tired from a day spent gazing at a digital block. It’s weird how you can do nothing for nine hours and feel tired. But I did. Everything sucked. I was caught in my thoughts, my joy and peace log jammed. So, I decided to go on a walk.
Almost immediately, my mental state changed. I felt a rush of energy. I felt life returning to my bones. I felt contentment. I walked in the front door and took a deep breathe. Everything is going to be okay, I said.
This isn’t a post about walking, per se, although you could do must worse than make walking a daily habit. It is a post, however, about the way we meander through life. It’s a post, more importantly, about how our pace severs us from Life.
In the Bible, verse after verse uses walking with God as a metaphor for healthy spirituality. This metaphor shows up so many times, you would think God is quite serious about the matter, like when you’re a child and your mom tells you not to play in the road. She tells you repeatedly for one simple reason: if you don’t listen, things will go bad.
Here are a few examples.
Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah WALKED with God. -Genesis 6:9
Enoch WALKED with God, and he was not, for God took him. -Genesis 5:24
You shall WALK in all the way that the LORD your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess. -Deuteronomy 5:33
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to WALK humbly with your God? -Micah 6:8
But I say, WALK by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. -Galatians 5:16
Over and over, from the front cover of the Bible to the end, we see this reminder to walk with God. But why?
Walking with God is the single greatest factor in determining our spiritual health. More than morality, more than spiritual disciplines, more than anything else, the pace at which we live our days shapes the people we become.
You can’t enter the kingdom of God with a hurried soul.
As I peruse the landscape of my life, I see that my life is hopelessly out of balance. It’s not that I’m doing too much. It’s not that I have too many activities on my schedule. It’s the mindset behind my unbalanced life. It’s the belief that I must do too much, that my meaning and significance in this life are interwoven with what I do, that I’m defined by how much I accomplish.
You can’t know God unless you learn to move at God’s pace.
Here’s what Kosuke Toyama says.
“God walks slowly because he is love. If he is not love, he would have gone much faster.”
DIRT ROAD GOD
I grew up in small town Mississippi. I have a lot of great memories of my childhood. One of my favorite pastimes, though, was riding backroads. We would ride for hours, my friends and I. No agenda. No concern for the clock hands. In the byways of rural America, time dissipates. Eventually, if you wandered far enough away from the street lights, the asphalt gave way to dirt and gravel.
On the blacktop, you felt invincible. You could punch the gas, stretch the limits of your vehicle’s speedometer, and you rarely felt out of control.
The dirt road, however, was different. Much different. You never felt comfortable. Between the potholes and loose gravel, your tires fought to gain traction on the surface. You had no choice but to slow down, to pay attention, to respect the ground beneath your tires. To ignore it would be to ignore your own well-being.
And this is what we must do if we want to know God. We must adopt dirt road theology. God isn’t found on the blacktop, where we drive the vehicle of our life at high speeds while eating a chicken biscuit and checking the latest news. We’re addicted to the blacktop because the blacktop gives us control. We can accomplish more. We can test the boundaries of our limitations.
But we can’t experience God.
God has a speed, and that speed is slow. There is no other way. God won’t punch the gas to catch up to our busy life because love doesn’t work that way. Love is slow. Love takes time.
OUR PACE IS A VIOLENT ACT TO OUR SOUL
The speed at which we live is a violent act to our souls. No wonder we’re depressed. No wonder stress is our closest companion. Our lives are too busy, too fast. We meander through life at break-neck speeds, and we wonder why we’re exhausted. We wonder why our society erodes before our eyes. Almost every problem, both individual and collective, lies in this one truth: we’re moving too fast.
Whether it’s our fractured society, our addiction to guns, our blind pursuit of progress and success, our superficiality, the exponential rise of chronic illnesses, every form of brokenness and evil begins when we stop walking with God and instead move at our own speed.
Our souls are wounded by our pace. We’re disconnected from our Creator. Severed from Life. We must slow down. We must learn how to walk with God, how to live in such a way that we feel the ground under our feet, that we have margin in our schedules.
YOU CAN’T ENTER THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITH A HURRIED SOUL.
That’s why this metaphor of walking is used over-and-over in the Bible. Walking with God describes a way of life that’s attentive to the world. It sees beauty in unexpected places, in the people we least expect.
God wants to reveal himself to us. God wants to heal us. God wants to shower us in peace and joy and hope. But we would rather accomplish more. We would rather be successful. So, in his grace, God allows us to drive full-speed, to go as fast as our hearts desire. And when we run ourselves ragged, God is there to take our hand and pull us back up. The question is this: when will we stop relying on God to peel us off the pavement, to heal our exhausted soul, and instead start moving at a pace that’s more sustainable?
We don’t have to keep living like this. But we must have the courage to change. We must have the strength to say no. We must value our soul more than we value success.
Grace and peace, friends.